


Basement

by jessicaciao



Category: Supernatural
Genre: supernatural-esque
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:31:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessicaciao/pseuds/jessicaciao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A boy gets ready to sneak out when he discovers his sister's late night activities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Basement

**Author's Note:**

> This could be put in the same category as Supernatural, I guess, due to the monsters and the placement of heavy responsibility on a young person's shoulders. However, none of the canon characters show up in the story, so if you were looking for that, I'm sorry.

Deacon’s older sister Bernie was heading off to college in August, and the two had never been very close. He knew that he’d miss her when she was gone. Maybe just not as much as his parents. Definitely not as much as their littlest brother; Drew was nine and loved his siblings as only a child could: absolutely and often by shooting them with Nerf guns.

A hot June night found Deacon laying awake in bed, listening to the creakings in the house. Almost sixteen years had left him with a catalog of the various creaks, groans, and whispers. The heavy, quick squeaks up the stairs were his mother running up to bed (she’d never been light on her feet). The lighter sighs of the steps were his mom’s fianceé's. 

(Yvonne had started spending a lot of time drinking with her friends after the kids’ father had died, and then met Betty at a support group. Betty led to María, who had led to Katrine, who had led to Liv. Liv stayed for five years and then proposed, moved into the house, and loved Yvonne’s children as her own.)

Across the hall, Drew fidgeted and sighed in his sleep, and farther down, the master bedroom door closed. Muted sounds of a TV show filtered through, and Deacon took a deep breath. Just another half-hour, and they’ll be out for the count, he thought. So he laid awake and listened.

Drew in his bedroom. Yvonne and Liv in theirs. Bernie…

Deacon’s ears strained for her footsteps or for the clacking of her keyboard, but he heard nothing. She hadn’t gone out that night, and before he’d gone upstairs, he’d seen her talking to Liv, making plans for dorm shopping the next day. Where’d she go?

Minutes passed as he tried to locate her in the sounds of the house, filtering through the clanking and rumbles of the old pipes and walls. Finally, he got up and rolled his eyes. If she wanted to sneak out, that was her business. His was a party, and Zoey had promised to be there. Slipping into his shoes, he tiptoed down the stairs, dodging every squeaky spot nimbly.

As one entered through the foyer, they were greeted by the staircase in the middle of the house, and the first floor ringed itself around it. Stepping from the foyer and facing the staircase, the family's considerable DVD collection was housed in the entertainment room to the right; Liv had brought her enormous TV with when she'd moved in, which had endeared her to the kids instantly. To the left was the too-fancy dining room with the stained-glass shade and the elegant table and chairs to seat a family of ten. Usually, the family ate at the bar in the large kitchen right off the dining room. Above the counters that edged the left and back wall were high windows that stretched to the ceiling and gave a view into the backyard and the attached sunroom that Yvonne had turned partially into a greenhouse.

Deacon's plan of attack was through the dining room and the kitchen, through the sunroom, hop the fence, and run down the block to wait for his friends to pick him up. He grabbed a stack of bread slices from the pantry and made his way toward the sunroom door when a crash from behind the other door in the kitchen stopped him. The basement. Even now that he was almost sixteen, he hated going into the basement at night. Drew constantly made up stories of the monsters down there and refused point-blank to go down there ever, even with the daylight coming in through the windows and every light turned on.

The scar on his arm itched, and he eyed the basement door warily. It sat in the right wall of the kitchen, even though it had the same faded white paint that the rest of the house had, it seemed more menacing. The crash was surely just part of his imagination. No other sound came from behind the door.

And then, footsteps.

The old wood protested as a body neared the door, and Deacon backed away to put the bar between him and the basement door, instinctive fear of the dark taking over and making him wish for his bat in the garage. He held his breath, fingers punching divots into the soft bread in his hand, and he braced himself for whatever horror lay behind the door.

It swung open, and Bernie mounted the last step from the shadows. Looking up, she noticed Deacon backed completely against the opposite wall, eyes wide with fright. “Deke! I thought you’d have snuck out by now,” she said with a smile, quickly wiping a gooey speck away from below her eye. "Don't think I don't hear the doors opening and closing when they shouldn't be."

"I heard something crash," he said. Had it not been his imagination? What was she doing in that creepy old basement in the middle of the night?

She opened her mouth to give some bland answer about it being just the house settling, but something stopped her. Her eyes watched his face, and he watched hers shift from pain to sadness to resignation. “I have something to tell you.” And she turned and descended.

Apprehension had filled him from his toes to his chest, and a morbid, cat-killing curiosity drove him to follow her. The cement walls and floor kept the basement damp and chilled, perfect for storing the extra groceries that Yvonne always bought. But Bernie was heading past those, past the stacks of cardboard boxes that held Christmas decorations, past the washer and dryer. She was going for the very back, and she knelt to shift a large stack of boxes aside. As he drew level with her, he saw that she was uncovering a decorated, cast-iron circle 5 feet in diameter set in the ground. It looked like a cross between a manhole cover and an Aztec calendar.

Bernie grabbed a flashlight that sat on top of a nearby stool to illuminate the circle’s etchings. Deacon muttered, “Whoa,” as twisting, beastly shapes morphed into view. They coiled all around the circle, fangs and claws and wings and tails scratching and tearing and strangling each other.

"You know how Drew always talks about monsters in the basement?" She tapped the etchings and then dragged the stool closer so she could sit down. "It’s true. They live down here. Everything about monsters in the basement is true."

Deacon slid a sideways glance at her and realized with a start that she had started wiping down a short sword, cleaning the same sticky substance off the blade that she’d wiped from her eye earlier. Even more startling and moving into terrifying territory was the massive shape slumped on the ground behind her. An enormous, pale arm lay by her foot, chunky fingers bent into painful contortions. The torso it was connected to was equally pale and massive, bound with muscle and fat, and the neck stump oozed.

"What the fuck is that?!"

Bernie tossed her rag aside and looked straight into his face. “It’s a monster. The same one that tried to kidnap you and Drew the night Dad died.”

Deacon sank to the ground and listened to Bernie spin a tale of monsters living in their basement, or more appropriately, in tunnels underneath their basement. The cast iron circle was an attempt to keep them at bay, and apparently, their dad spent most nights on watch, making sure that nothing would emerge.

"Dad’s, what, a monster hunter?"

She shook her head. “No, he mostly made sure they never made it to the surface. He has all these books,” she pointed to the stack of boxes she’d shifted to the side, “that describe spells and potions to keep the monsters down below, and if they ever do make it to the surface, how to dispose of them.”

" ‘Make it to the surface.’ You mean, like that thing?” Deacon pointed shakily at the corpse by Bernie. “What do they want?”

"Us, mostly. This one," she grabbed a stack of papers from a nearby box and starting rifling through them, eventually thrusting it Deacon's way to read, "likes children. I’m too old, so they’d just leave me alone unless I provoked them. You are still technically a child, so they might try to take you. Kind of up to the monster. But especially Drew." Her expression darkened to rage and determination. "The night Dad died, he wasn’t on watch, obviously, and I didn't... I didn't believe him, so I went to bed. Only thing was, I couldn’t sleep because Mom was at the hospital with him and Gramma was here watching us, and her snores were so loud. So I got up to get a drink of water and contemplate sleeping on one of the couches downstairs, and when I came back, I saw this thing enter your room, and it already had Drew. That’s where your scar is from; it clawed you when I attacked it.”

Deacon dropped his gaze to his arm, inspecting the long stripe down his bicep. “Attacked with what?”

The sword glinted in her flashlight glow. “Dad told me what was happening down here when he got really sick, because he realized that he might not get better. He had me stay up a few nights with him, and we talked about it. He showed me his books and all the notes he’d taken, and he gave me the sword.” She smacked the broad side against the corpse and laid it across her lap to clean again.

Monsters in the basement. A sword-wielding sister, fulfilling a promise to a father who’d been dead for years. Spells and magic and he bore a scar from a monster claw. “Why didn’t you tell Mom? Does she know? Does Liv know?”

Bernie eyed the cover distrustfully as she replied, “Mom doesn’t know, and I didn’t tell her when I was younger because I didn’t want to worry her. I took this on as my whole responsibility, and I knew I’d have to pass it on to you at some point.” Her eyebrows gathered, and she looked strangely like she was about to cry. “I’m so sorry to put this on you, Deke, but I’m going away, and someone needs to protect the family.”

The house settled around them, and then he asked very quietly, “What does Drew know? He’s always talking about the monsters.”

"They… they got pretty far with him, after the one ran after slicing you. Got down here and down the hole. I wasn’t fast enough to stop him, but I followed." Her hand tightened around the sword. "Sliced up every creature I faced until I found Drew abandoned in a side tunnel, screaming and crying and messed in his diaper. I picked him up, took him back upstairs, and got him cleaned up and rocked him back to sleep."

The amount of information to be processed was staggering, and Deacon wasn’t sure whether to believe his sister’s crazy story or not, though the monster corpse made it a little easier. “What are you going to do with that thing?”

"Dump it back down," Bernie said matter-of-factly. "No way it can stay here, and I know a spell good for tiny little messes." Church-going, youth group member Bernadette fought monsters and cleaned up the messes with magic. If not for the corpse, he couldn’t believe it.

"So wait, Dad made you in charge of this when he died? You were like eleven! That’s really unfair to do to someone!"

"Not as bad as watching your baby brother disappear down a tunnel after the monster taking it sliced at your other baby brother." She rubbed the sword handle and finally said, "You don’t have to do this, you know. We could tell Mom—she can handle it now—and If they move to a house not on the network down there, you won’t have to!" Seeing the flabbergasted and now skeptical expression on her brother’s face.

With a smile, she goaded, “Go on, go out wherever you were going to go. I’ve got this, for a little while longer.”

Eager to escape the damp and the now-literal monsters, Deacon jumped up, but then turned to look at her. “Tomorrow, you show me how this stuff works. Do you ever sleep?”

A real laugh, quiet but sincere, erupted out of her previously super serious expression. “Very little. College will let me catch up on sleep, strangely. So go!” she repeated. “Go to your thing. I’ve got this.” She reached up and grabbed a large hook from the ceiling and snugged it into a latch in the iron lid. "I've got to shove this thing back down there and clean up his mess. You go on. I promise, I'll show you tomorrow."

 

The sword handle was slightly too small for him (had Dad had this sword custom-made for Bernie?), but he held it tightly as he took up the stool near the monster cover. His nights had been solely devoted to the basement, listening to Bernie tell stories of Dad watching the cover and then her many nights, watching in terror as she waited for That Monster to resurface. They went through their dad’s collection, and he found himself devouring the chapters, learning as much as he could. He’d cowered back when the lid rattled open and a slithering, hissing tube with teeth emerged. Bernie had hacked it to pieces and then shown him as the sun came up how to charm the cover, recharge its protective properties.

This was his first night on his own, and he had his cell phone in his lap. The screen lit up periodically with texts from his buddies and from Zoey, wondering what he was doing and why he’d stopped sneaking out to meet them. When he noticed a text from his sister, he picked the phone up.

_»How’s it going? Any activity?_

_»Nothing yet. How many boring nights did you have where nothing happened?_

_»Too many. You get used to it, though. Especially with the books and Dad’s notes. I’ve read through those about twenty times, and I actually started moving them over to my computer so I had a digital copy. You feeling okay?_

_»Very nervous. Wish I had backup. Can you send me those files?_

_»Sure. We should tell Mom and Liv. Hang in there. You’ve got the sword; you can take them on. And when I get back this weekend, I’ll help you._  
 _»Promise._


End file.
